SLS 23RS-287 ORIGINAL
2023 Regular Session
SENATE CONCURRENT RESOL UTION NO. 21
BY SENATOR CATHEY
INTERGOVERN RELATIONS. Affirms the sovereign right of Louisiana to nullify
unconstitutional acts of the federal government.
1 A CONCURRENT RESOL UTION
2 To affirm the sovereign right of Louisiana to nullify unconstitutional acts of the federal
3 government.
4 WHEREAS, Article I of the Constitution of Louisiana establishes a "Declaration of
5 Rights"; and
6 WHEREAS, Section 1 of Article I declares in pertinent part that "All government,
7 of right, originates with the people, is founded on their will alone, and is instituted to protect
8 the rights of the individual and for the good of the whole"; and
9 WHEREAS, Section 1 of Article I further provides that "The rights enumerated in
10 this Article are inalienable by the state and shall be preserved inviolate by the state"; and
11 WHEREAS, Section 2 of Article I declares that "No person shall be deprived of life,
12 liberty, or property, except by due process of law"; and
13 WHEREAS, when "We the People" ordained and established the Constitution of the
14 United States of America, the people and states granted only specific, limited powers to the
15 federal government, enumerated in Section 8 of Article I; and
16 WHEREAS, Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution of the United States,
17 respectively, exclusively vest legislative, executive, and judicial powers to the corresponding
18 branches of government; and
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1 WHEREAS, this horizontal separation of powers reflects the understanding the
2 founding fathers derived from both scripture and experience that sinful man could not be
3 trusted to always be virtuous and public-minded; and
4 WHEREAS, the founding fathers did not want undue power to be combined in any
5 branch of government where, if left unchecked, it could become tyrannical; and
6 WHEREAS, the Constitution of the United States does not permit Congress to
7 delegate or confer any lawmaking power to any other branch of government; and
8 WHEREAS, no other person, agency, or department of any other branch of the
9 federal government has any lawmaking power under the Constitution of the United States;
10 and
11 WHEREAS, Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution of the United States establishes
12 the only process by which a bill becomes a law; and
13 WHEREAS, this process requires passage by both houses of Congress followed by
14 either presidential approval or congressional override of presidential veto; and
15 WHEREAS, any action by the executive or judicial branches that purports to enact
16 law or that is treated as such is a usurpation of power; and
17 WHEREAS, federal court opinions and executive orders are often erroneously
18 interpreted as law or to have amended the Constitution of the United States; and
19 WHEREAS, the principle of separation of powers is so innately representative of a
20 republican form of government that it is upheld and reinforced in the Constitution of
21 Louisiana through the establishment of three branches of state government; and
22 WHEREAS, when creating a federal government through ratification of the
23 Constitution of the United States, the people and the states also designed a vertical
24 separation of powers between the superior sovereign states and the inferior federal
25 government; and
26 WHEREAS, a vertical separation of powers is explicitly articulated in Article I,
27 Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States, granting to the federal government only
28 limited, enumerated, lawmaking powers; and
29 WHEREAS, this vertical separation of powers is also incorporated into the Bill of
30 Rights; and
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1 WHEREAS, the First Amendment specifically denies Congress lawmaking power
2 within certain listed fields; and
3 WHEREAS, the Ninth Amendment specifically prohibits the federal government
4 from interfering with rights not expressly enumerated in the Constitution of the United
5 States; and
6 WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment, denies the federal government powers not
7 delegated to it in the Constitution of the United States; and
8 WHEREAS, this vertical separation of powers is generally well known by the people
9 and the states and was known and respected by the federal government for over one hundred
10 years of our nation's history; and
11 WHEREAS, this principle has become increasingly disregarded in recent decades,
12 as if the federal government were supreme in all areas and unlimited in its jurisdiction; and
13 WHEREAS, whether this shift was intentional or accidental, active or passive, it
14 nevertheless finds no support in the Constitution of the United States of America, the laws
15 of the United States, or the constitutions of any of the sovereign states and is an illegal
16 usurpation of power and the unalienable rights of the people; and
17 WHEREAS, any federal action that violates either the horizontal or vertical
18 separation of powers is void as the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of
19 the land; and
20 WHEREAS, the landmark Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison declared that
21 "a law repugnant to the Constitution is void"; and
22 WHEREAS, an act of Congress repugnant to the Constitution of the United States
23 cannot become a law; and
24 WHEREAS, the provisions of the Constitution of the United States supersede all
25 other laws; and
26 WHEREAS, in the 1879 decision, Ex parte Siebold, the Supreme Court ruled that
27 "An unconstitutional law is void, and is as no law. An offence created by it is not a crime.
28 A conviction under it is not merely erroneous, but is illegal and void, and cannot be a legal
29 cause of imprisonment"; and
30 WHEREAS, in Norton v. Shelby County the Supreme Court stated that "An
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1 unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no
2 protection; it creates no office; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had
3 never been passed"; and
4 WHEREAS, in Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court further opined that "Where
5 rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rulemaking or legislation
6 which would abrogate them"; and
7 WHEREAS, as Thomas Jefferson explained in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798,
8 "whensoever the General government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are
9 unauthoritative, void, and of no force."; and
10 WHEREAS, Jefferson further added "but where powers are assumed which have not
11 been delegated a nullification of the act is a rightful remedy: that every state has a natural
12 right, in cases not within the compact to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of
13 power by others within their limits"; and
14 WHEREAS, the Constitution of the United States binds federal lawmakers by oath
15 to support the constitution, and when they fail to do so, the rightful remedy for states is to
16 nullify their usurpations and to declare their acts void; and
17 WHEREAS, every constitutional officeholder must know and understand these
18 important constitutional limitations of power and individually determine how best to defend
19 the rights of the people and fulfill his or her oath of office; and
20 WHEREAS, President Andrew Jackson illustrated commitment to this principle in
21 1832 through his veto of a bill to recharter the Bank of the United States; and
22 WHEREAS, President Jackson argued that the principle of separation of powers
23 meant that no branch of government could claim the exclusive right to settle constitutional
24 differences of opinion because each public officer swears to uphold the constitution as he
25 understands it, not as it is understood by others; and
26 WHEREAS, President Jackson's veto illustrated the requirement that every
27 officeholder must reach an independent judgment about the jurisdictional scope of the
28 federal government and act consistently upon those judgments; and
29 WHEREAS, the Constitution of the United States assures the people and the states
30 that their respective rights and powers will be respected by the federal government; and
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1 WHEREAS, these sacred rights shall not be infringed upon by any action of the
2 federal government purporting to wield any undue authority.
3 THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby
4 affirm the sovereign right of Louisiana to nullify unconstitutional acts of the federal
5 government.
The original instrument and the following digest, which constitutes no part
of the legislative instrument, were prepared by Matt DeVille.
DIGEST
SCR 21 Original 2023 Regular Session Cathey
Affirms the right of Louisiana to nullify unconstitutional acts of the federal government.
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